Browsing the aisles of Costco the other day, picking up giant slabs of toilet paper and over sized trays of pastries that no one would eat, I turned the corner to the area where all the free sample people were battling like relief workers in a disaster zone to get their products to the hungry and the desperate, and was stopped dead in my tracks.
A ghost from my past had returned. Someone I had long thought dead, someone I wasn't even sure had ever existed in the first place. Staring out from what appeared to be a display of barbecue sauces was a photo of the grinning face of a man who seemed to be in a state of divine ecstasy brought on by a plate of indeterminate meats and vegetables. Inscribed beneath this grinning maniac was the legend, "Yes, There Really Is A Mr Yoshida!".
These words hit me like a punch in the stomach. I felt sick, then dizzy, and grabbed out for the trolley to try and maintain my balance. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but it was true.
It had always been true.
To explain this sudden and unexpected shock, one must return to a different time, a time of youth and of innocence, when Costco was new and exciting, when its promise of 144 Mars Bars for a tenner seemed like the greatest thing in the world. When I was a kid, my parents would drag me round Costco on a Saturday afternoon, and we'd return home with vast trays of cat food, kitchen towel and orange juice.
This was when I first encountered Mr Yoshida.
I didn't go looking for him, and I doubt that he was looking for me. Our meeting was quite by accident. Just another shopping trip to Costco. This time however, things would be different. We trudged round the shop, with the crowds of other Saturday shoppers, buying the usual rubbish, and then I saw it.
At the end of one of the aisles, rising far above me, were hundreds of cardboard palettes containing bottles of a foul looking brown gloop. On the side of each of these cardboard display units was a smiling man proudly stating that, "Yes, There Really Is A Mr Yoshida!".
I had no idea what to think. Immediately my ten year old brain was awash with questions. What the hell was I seeing here? Who had asked this man if there really was a Mr Yoshida? It certainly wasn't me. Why was this box telling me this? Was the happy man on the box so fed up of having to state that there really was a Mr Yoshida that he had launched some sort of weird brown beverage just to stop people asking him the same question over and over again? What lunacy was going on here?
These questions and many more haunted me on the journey home, and continued to fill my every waking hour for the next few weeks. Perhaps the man on the box was Mr Yoshida, but perhaps not. It seemed foolish to imagine that, with a world population of six billion, there wouldn't be a single Mr Yoshida on the planet. I didn't need a box to tell me that there really was a Mr Yoshida, I could have worked that out for myself. But without this bizarre message, I would never have even concieved of such a thing as Mr Yoshida. If there really was a Mr Yoshida, what else was out there, waiting to be discovered? The world had suddenly become a whole lot bigger.
Gradually, I was able to push these thoughts from my mind. Every trip back to Costco, I'd inevitabley see that beaming face and read the words, "Yes, There Really Is A Mr Yoshida!" and the whole episode would kick off again. As time went by however, these questions just became part of the general background noise. As I got older, I stopped going to Costco with my parents, and I forgot about Mr Yoshida. Even when I did go back to Costco, I didn't see the mysterious bottles of brown sauce, or the towering stack of grinning faces. I began to doubt that there had ever even been a Mr Yoshida. Perhaps I'd imagined the entire thing? This certainly seemed more plausible than a packaging manufacturer printing out hundreds of thousands of cardboard trays with the phrase, "Yes, There Really Is A Mr Yoshida!" printed on the side. I had moved on.
This is why the return of Mr Yoshida into my life was so shocking. I had convinced myself that the whole thing had been some sort of weird delusion, and yet there it was, right in front of me.
"Yes, There Really Is A Mr Yoshida!"
Finally these words made sense.
I still don't know what those plastic bottles contain. I think it might be some sort of condiment or marinade or something. I really don't care. I definitely won't ever buy the stuff. I will, however, always remember an advertising slogan so powerful that it caused me not only to question my place in the universe, but also to doubt my own sanity.
